Thursday, 20 November 2014

Today I worked with a student to create a simple app using Tiny Tap. This came about because one of the students showed an interest to make an app. He had tried using Tiny Tap before on his own iPad but had not made a game for learning before at school.

I too was new to Tiny Tap.

I made a time through the Homeroom teacher to sit with the student to explore Tiny Tap further. We looked at the example games on the site and play with a few of them to further understand what you could do. We then made an agreement to find out more ourselves and to meet again to create an app.

As with all technology use, I like to document the learning or to create something that furthers the learning. The class had been learning a lot about counting money so we decided to create a game about counting coins.

In my mind I mentally went through the steps that would be necessary to create the app. I purposefully wanted to use real items so that the students would be having to count coins to create their different answers.

To make it simple I asked the student to create 4 piles of coins on some colored paper. He then grabbed some scrap paper to write down the total amount for each group of coins. This required counting and checking - good we are practicing the actual skill even whilst creating the app!

Next we had to take a good clear photo of the coins and crop it to tidy it up. Then we opened the app Tiny Tap and started to build it. You simply add the photo and make it the background and add the title using the Text feature.

Finally we added some voice recorded instructions such as 'Tap on the pile of coins that make 43 cents'. When all the instructions had been added the app was saved and uploaded to the Tiny Tap server by the teacher and made private which means that it can't be accessed unless you have the URL. The URL was copied and a QR code created so that it can be scanned at school by other students wanting to try out the app.